The University Daily
University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas
KANSAN
Thursday, March 10, 1983
Vol. 93, No. 115 USPS 650-640
Burford resigns from EPA post
By United Press International
WASHINGTON — Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Anne Gorsuch Burford, under intense fire for her agency's toxic waste cleanup program, resigned yesterday in what President Reagan called an act of "unselfishness and personal courage."
"You can walk out of the Environmental Protection Agency with your head held high," said Jeffrey McDougall.
Burford took her resignation letter to the White House at 4 p.m. CST as rumors swept the capital that she finally would resign after months of controversy.
Accompanied by her new husband, Robert,
and Interior Secretary James Watt, Burford
then met with Reagan and White House
counselor Edwin Meese.
ASKED WHETHER Burford had been forced to resign, Deputy White House Press secretary Larry Speakes said, "No, it was her decision. It was entirely her decision."
Reagan accepted the resignation "with deep regret."
He said, "For the past two years, you have faithfully and honestly carried out your mission of helping this nation cleanse its air and water and make wiser use of its lands.
"Your resignation today is an occasion of sorrow for us all. But it is more than that: it is an act of unselfishness and personal courage that once again demonstrates your loyalty to the
"Over the past several weeks, I have been greatly disappointed that some persons have unjustly attacked you and have made unfair judgments based upon allegations and innoueno alone. You have responded with a grace and understanding on what you countless admirers across the nation."
SPEAKES SAID BURFORD would be appointed to a "major" commission or board but, at her request, only in a part-time capacity. Deputy EPA Administrator John Hernandez was named acting EPA director pending a search for a permanent replacement.
In her letter Burford said she resigned "with great regret, but it is now clear that my resignation is essential to termination of the controversy and confusion generated by the outstanding dispute over congressional access to certain EPA documentary materials."
"Without an end to these不便ful difficulties, EPA is disabled from implementing its mandate and you are distracted from pursuing research that addresses international goals of your administration," she said.
It was Reagan's claim of executive privilege over the documents — and Burford's adhering steadfastly to that position — that resulted in the House vote Dec. 16 to hold her in contempt of Congress. She was the highest government official ever cited.
Burford and the EPA's $1.6-billion Superfund toxic waste cleanup program are being investigated by six congressional subcommittees and the Justice Department on such allegations as with pollutants, using the program for political ends, and perjury in congressional testimony.
Lack of space cramps campus police
By DON HENRY
Staff Reporter
KU police officials use patrol officers to deliver their office memos. They frequently have to go to different buildings to have large meetings. And they must keep their copy
For five years, the KU Police Department has been scattered around campus in cramped offices.
Jim Denney, the KU police director, said this week that in 1978 the department had outgrown its offices in Hoch Auditorium and had to split up.
HE SAID KU officials had promised the department that they would be resumed in light of reports with six KU officers.
The department still lacks enough space and is facing new problems because its offices are divided among Carruth-O'Leary Hall, Hoch and a facilities operations building.
Mike Thomas, the director of public safety,
said the cramped offices made it difficult to
get around.
"There are times when we have suspects or witnesses sitting in the halls waiting to be interviewed."
Denney also said space limitations forced most of the police officers to share offices.
"It's a real problem. We've got so many people sharing office now that sometimes I give up on them."
Those who receive telephone calls about confidential or privileged information sometimes have to ask their office mates to leave, he said.
DENNEY ALSO SAID the department frequently had to reserve other rooms on campus to hold departmental conferences, because the present quarters didn't have any rooms big
"We don't have a room we can get more than two additional people in at the same time," he said.
"The copy machine is in the hall, and that's not because it's convenient there. It's because we physically don't have enough space to put it anywhere else."
In the 1978 move, the police department's administrators and investigators moved to the south wing of the third floor of Carruth O'Leary, while its dispatch station and patrol headquarters remained in Hoch. The department's officers are in a facilities operations building.
DENNEY SAID THAT KU officials said in 1978
that the police department would be reunited in quarters at Memorial Stadium.
"That was supposed to happen," he said. "It just never did. It sort of died."
William Hogan, associate executive vice chancellor, said a committee he had organized was looking at several possible ways to increase the space available to the police department.
But he would not say whether the additional space would allow the department to be
Relocation at the stadium was not being considered seriously, he said.
RODGER OROKE, director of Support Services, which supervises facilities operations and the police department, said the committee was in the final stage of arranging for space that would allow the police department to be reunited. He said the parking offices would move to Carruth-O'Leary and the police department would move back to Hoch.
"This would alleviate the problem of physical crowding at the police department, but it still wouldn't provide them with nearly the space they really need," he said.
"Because we at Support Services don't provide the University with as much glory as some departments, we are forced to take space that is left over."
See POLICE page 5
House approves plan to raise retirement age
By United Press International
WASHINGTON — The House overwhelmingly approved a $165 billion Social Security rescue bill yesterday that would raise the retirement age for Americans in the United States, taxes for those in poverty, and checks for people in need.
The 202-148 bipartisan vote on what Speaker Thomas O'Neill called "landmark legislation" came after bitter debate on only one issue - how to increase the Social Security system's debt next century.
THE BILL NOW goes to the Senate, whose expected vote for raising the retirement age would virtually ensure it would be in the final bill. A spokesman said yesterday that President Reagan also endorsed requiring Americans to retire. Neil said he hoped for a Senate vote next week.
approved raising the retirement age in two steps from 65 to 67 by 2027.
Americans born in 1943 or later would have to wait until 66 to retire with full benefits; those born after 1960 would wait until 67. The House took a second vote nailing down approval of the bill.
Before final passage, the House narrowly
To meet the system's short-term money needs, the bill would increase payroll taxes, delay this year's July cost-of-living payment by six months, tax checks of wealthier pensioners and require new federal workers to join beginning next year.
THE BILL ALSO includes an extension of unemployment benefits for another six months and 10 weeks of additional compensation for those whose eligibility runs out, a benefit hike for 4 million Americans collecting Supplemental Income, and a change in the way Medicare pays hospital bills.
White House manipulated the retirement-age vote and that Democrats were "willed in." He said after the vote, "I think some Democrats and Republicans would have helped them did this afternoon about cutting benefits."
Rep, Claude Pepper, D-Fla., charged that the
BUT PEPPER SAID said he voted for final passage because otherwise "there would be chaos in Washington." He said he was confident Congress would rescind the retirement age
The House soundly rejected an alternate long-term proposal to add 0.53 percent to the payroll tax rate on employers and employees in the U.S., but the peaches by O'Neill and the 82-year-old Pepper.
But critics said the higher age, in the words of House Aging Chairman Edward Roybal, D-Calif., amounted to "sentencing people to two more years of hard labor," especially blue-collar workers, minorities and women — those who can least afford it.
Rhonda Neugebauer, head of Latin American Solidarity, holds a sign protesting the University Daily Kansan. She was one of about 25 sign-wielding demonstrators who marched in front of Flint Hall yesterday to protest the news and editorial policies of the Kansan. See story page 6.
Budget plan could cause KU layoffs
By MICHAEL BECK Staff Reporter $^{10}$
Staff Reporter $ ^{1} $
KANAS S CITY, Kan. — The chairmen of several departments at the University of Kansas Medical Center are alarmed by a request that faculty be calling for training in funds.
Med Center officials said yesterday that reductions of 10 percent in their 1984 budgets would result in faculty layoffs, class cancellations and increased hospital costs.
THIS IS THE first time the University has asked the Med Center to submit the contingency budgets, which would go into effect in case of drastic cuts in state funding.
Charles Hartman, vice chancellor for the College of Health Sciences, said the budget was merely an exercise to see whether departments could make reductions.
Ed Walaszek, chairman of the department of pharmacology, toxicology and therapeutics, said that if such a budget were implemented, he would be able to assess the losses, and the ultimate loser would be the student.
HE SAID HE THOUGHT that such reductions were unwarranted. Administrators at the Lawrence campus are not being fair to the Med Center, he said, because departments on the campus were asked to produce contingency budgets with only 3 percent and 5 percent reductions.
"This contingency budget is bulshit," he said.
"What they want to do is take money from us and
Computer scientists flee academia for better pay
See BUDGET page 5
By SEEMA SIROHI
Staff Reporter
"Computer science has become more than a profitable industry — it's essentially the heart of the economy. Therefore, computer scientists have a much higher economic value," said Victor Wallace, chairman of the department of computer science.
The growing computer industry, with its appetite for skilled workers, is eating its own seed crop by attracting more and more students to college professors of computer science said recently.
AS A RESULT, universities, including the University of Kansas, must compete to keep
them cross over from academia to the greener pastures of the business world.
The computer industry dangles many carriors in front of qualified personnel, such as high salaries and the latest equipment, until some of
"Amost everything has a price. How much do you get before you do something you don't want"
"What's it worth?"
The faculty members who stay are those who want to be associated with students and get the freedom in research that a university environment provides, he said.
The drain of faculty to positions in business is a result of a high demand and a low supply, according to William Bulgren, professor of computer science and math. He anticipates no decline in demand for qualified people in the field for the next 10 years.
THE SHORT-TERM EFFECTS of the problem would be substantial, but its long-term implications are less known.
Short-term effects include a limited faculty faced with an increasing number of students;
See COMPUTER page 5
Weather
Today will be sunny and cool with a high in the 40%, according to the National Weather Service in Topeka. Winds will be from the north at 10 to 20 mph
Tenight will be clear to partly cloudy and colder. The low will be about 15.
Tomorrow will be warmer with a high in the low 50s.
Child kidnappings increase; money rarely a motive
Children playing alone are among those most vulnerable to kidnapping. Illustration by Ted Merged/Kansas
By LADONNA LONGSTREET Staff Reporter
Tommy Lauver was 11 months old when a stranger threatened his mother, Frances, with a knife and drove off with the boy still strapped in his seat in the family car.
During his absence, Tommy's parents constantly worried about his safety. A nervous breakdown temporarily paralyzed Tom's arm. Yet Frances said she never gave up hoping that Tommy would be found, because if she stopped believing, she would have nothing.
The car was found an hour later, but the child was gone. His father, Tom, worked as a service man for a mobile home company. The family owned a car that the driver did not want money. He wanted a little boy
The nightmare they endured is not unique. Many parents today do not know where their children are or even if they are alive. Their offspring have been matched away without permission.
The Lauvers got his son back one year and 16 days after he was kidnapped.
An estimated 130,000 to 1.8 million children under the age of 18 disappear each year in the world.
MOST OF THE PARENTS of missing children never expected their child to disappear.
However, Sgt. Bob Watts of the Kansas City, Mo., police department said that the Chowchilla kidnapping and the Atlanta murders had made the possibility of child abduction more real to many parents who before had chosen not to think about it.
The reality of child abduction paralyzed the small community of Chowchilla, Calif., when a busload of 26 children and the driver disappeared. Two of those parents was wealthy or had well-known relatives.
The kidnappers locked their victims in a buried trailer with a limited supply of water and food. The driver and two of the older boys were trapped under the trap door. They all returned home safely.
With such realization growing, parents of potential and actual victims have had to learn how to handle the situation.
"It can happen to anybody." Watts said.
BUT MY PARENTS in Atlanta, GA., did not get their children back alive. They received only their bodies. Twenty-nine young people were kidnapped and murdered between June 1970 and May 1881. Many of the victims were children, who had been raped, strangled and bludgeoned to death.
A list of basic precautions that parents can take has been developed by Child Pind, a non-profit organization in New Palzt, N.Y., that educated children and parents locate each other.
PARENTS SHOULD fingerprint their child, photograph him four times a year, keep updated records on him, teach him his full name and phone number and how to dial long-distance, said Diana Dierks, a communication officer at Child Find.
These precautions could help recover a child in case of a kidnapping, she said. Parents across the nation are heeding this advice and having their children fingerprinted.
The Lawrence Police Department is now
planning a program to fingerprint local children, called Ident-a-kid, said police officer Jessie Treu. Law enforcement personnel will fingerprint infants to 17-year-olds if their parents take them to designated sites, which will be probably in local grocery or department stores.
"We're expecting a real large turnout," Tree said. Police plan to sponsor the event one Saturday a month for as long as interest holds.
AFTER HAVING HEARD about programs in other cities, some Lawrence parents and civic organizations asked the police department if it would fingerprint children, Tree said. Freqent kidnappings in recent years have made many parents more aware of the danger.
Child Find also advises parents never to leave a young child alone, to teach children not to go with strangers or get into a stranger's car, to use them to always know where a child is supposed to be.
Dierks, the Child Find officer, said that in many cases an abductor would tell a child that they were not safe.
would give a child that my parents had sent him to take the child home. In December 1972, a man offered 7-year-old Steven Stayer a ride home. The adductor told the boy that his mother had given him the ride, with him a youngster's trust. Steven believed it.
His new "father" kept him moving frequently and living in isolated areas. Seven years later, the man also kidnapped Timmie White. 5. At this point Steven, now 14, learned from Timmie that his home was in the nearby town of Ukiah. Calif. He met the police and their parents, and the police were frantically search-
See KIDNAP page 6
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